


With Your Eyes Set Upon Me

by Calyps0



Category: Prodigal Son (TV 2019)
Genre: Angst, Character Study, M/M, author is sorry, but not enough to have not written this, i think i should call it what it is and just say this show is an addiction, why did I write this
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-26
Updated: 2020-03-26
Packaged: 2021-03-01 05:42:11
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,563
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23320054
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Calyps0/pseuds/Calyps0
Summary: Title is shamelessly (okay maybe some shame) stolen from a church hymn. As a general rule I own nothing, except maybe an obsession for this show and a penchant for writing things that are helpful to precisely zero (0) people.
Relationships: Malcolm Bright/Martin Whitly
Comments: 2
Kudos: 17





	With Your Eyes Set Upon Me

In-between yesterdays and tomorrows and _what-if_ s, his eyelids spatter with the net of people that halo his head like stars, that buzz like bronze-iron cicadas:

_(curious things, cicadas. Did you know—)_

The sister who builds castles out of words, like fearsome sand fortresses, so scalding-hot they turn into glass;

The mother who has been hurt more than even him, who defends herself with a cutting humor as sharp as any sword;

The detective who has been as much a father as Joseph had been—all strong hands and gentle words, whose sorrow is as deep and fathomless as the tide—as a fisherman’s—and as devout;

The woman who lost a half of herself, and thus folded over her own body as easily as if it were made of paper, just to see what it was like.

It is not easy to pity himself, when he sees them in his closed eyes, when their suffering is written on his memories in bold.

But he tries. _Oh,_ does he try. And at the very least the dies that have been cast and the red string that has _(not yet!)_ been cut _do_ indeed give him a sporting chance:

Those cuffs ringed around his wrists that are not yet holy, that do not yet glisten with twin rivers of blood and water;

The bruises, purple and soft and well-worn, under his eyes, socketing, bracketing, damaged membranes keeping him stitched loosely together, holding him in place;

The needles, the tonics, the pills—a dime a dozen, all, slipping easily down his throat.

(The cuffs, the bruises, the vices.)

Red around his wrists, his eyes, his throat. He is not a saint with stigmata, he is not the son of a carpenter, he is not worth a damn, but he _is_ damned, that is true.

 _Old habits,_ he thinks, and smiles.

Perhaps it is not so difficult to fall into pity after all.

\---

A parakeet’s symbolism, he was told in that pet shop ages ago—he must have been so young, back then, no circle-grip scars underneath his palms, no half-moons sinking below his lash-line—is as a guardian angel. It is as a sentinel, a keeper, a protector with a watchful, flint-sharp eye.

 _But!_ Strangely enough, domesticated parakeets often do not, if they happen to be set free, possess the survival skills to live a life out in the wild. They do not know how to forage, they do not know where to find shelter. So perhaps he watches over it as much as it does him. And with a name like ‘Sunshine,’ (which he is self-aware enough to admit might just be a misguided attempt at wish-fulfillment), perhaps, _perhaps,_ it is working.

It is not enough, though, to keep those habits at bay.

\---

And so he disguises himself—a clever, quixotic thing, flighty and ensconced in one of those suits with the knife-sharp shoulders: the lines that broaden, the stripes that lengthen, the colors that flatter.

(The weights sewn slyly in the lining, subtle panels that add rigidity to his posture, that make him feel as if he is not so close to falling away from himself altogether.)

But then he looks at himself in the mirror and instead of looking at the confident person he expects to see, instead standing there is—

_(a child playing dress-up, you will never have the homely, broad-shouldered strength of your father, you will never possess that storied gentleness, that gruff, smoke-timbred voice, those callused fingertips, the body of a man who has lived a life of work, of physicality, when you yourself must keep so stolidly rigid, must shackle and cover and weigh—)_

Some days he feels like nothing at all—a wisp of a person, not close to a human, never quite a man.

Pity, pity, pity.

Well.

 _Old habits, again,_ he supposes.

They die _hard._

\---

Perhaps, _perhaps,_ it is for the best. His life is not meant for being a steady, sure thing, but instead a messy, scrambled mass of memories _(half-gone)_ and faces _(half-blurred)_ and names _(half-written)._

It is, after all, easier to dive into what he knows best. Easy, like breathing in the scent of laundered linens, to busy himself with analysis and people-watching and detecting signs of neuro-divergence. Easy to map what a person will do or say, once he has access to the strings hanging above. And life’s a grand play, of course, or a divine comedy, and comedy of course is all about timing—

 _(And if he_ times _it just right he will shrug off that weighted jacket with a satisfying_ thud, _step into the already-running shower to feel the heavy rain across skeleton-thin shoulders, fall into bed, damp, to press manacles—grounding and firm against blinking pulse points—without a second to himself as his own weight. Never a second where he feels his might suddenly fill like a balloon and float away with the taste of helium on his tongue and the shriek of ozone in his ears.)_

He’d buy a weighted blanket, too, but he doesn’t want to arouse suspicion (he and Ainsley share an _Amazon Prime_ account), or sympathy (if he broke down and bought one in person.)

_(The shackles, now that he thinks about them, had eventually been purchased online (under an anonymous name and at an obscenely high shipping rate) after a truly disastrous trip to a sex shop that had been the only place within a twenty-mile radius to stock cuffs sturdy enough that they’d stay put but soft enough that they wouldn’t chafe if his nighttime imagination became suddenly even more ludicrous, a feat he’s not entirely certain he’d be surprised by.)_

But of course the blanket would only give him away. Would reveal that what he really wants—rather than weights in silk lining or beats of water on a too-high pressure setting or even cuffs encircling his wrists like limp hands—is the warmth that only a certain body can provide: one homely, broad-shouldered, and gentle, with a gruff, smoke-timbred voice and callused fingertips. What he wants curled around him at night and upon waking and every fever-tinged second is the body of a man who has lived a life of work, of physicality, of raising a son.

And this— _this!_ —is what he truly pities himself for. Not for the nights or the screaming or the terror that leaves his throat raw, his stomach churning, his limbs thin and _aching_ and empty, but the want. He pities himself because he _wants_ , and he wants someone he has every right to have, but should not.

He has wanted since he was a child seeking desperate approval, and he wants now as a full-fledged thing: a father and a lover rolled into one.

\---

 _Why not?_ He thinks, some charcoal-dark nights. _Why not?_ Hasn’t he suffered enough, hasn’t the shame that had twisted his heartstrings in knots, the fear that had closed in on his throat, been enough to suffer through? What about those bruises he wears like trophies, because (and again he can admit this now, again he has peeled back the layers to stare at the face of himself and be seen, truly seen, for the very first time), he _wants_ to be pitied, he _wants_ to be a failure, a thing that will never be accountable, because accountability is where they would take his father away, is where he would never cross that space between what is so clearly right and what he so clearly longs for.

(And if the bruises fade, if the bags become less purple, if he sleeps soundly through a night, then maybe he’ll start to get better, maybe he’ll become well-adjusted, maybe things will finally be alright for once.)

But the simple truth is that he doesn’t want things to be alright. He wants to be a messy thing, a damaged thing, an unaccountable thing.

So if he notices those bruises starting to heal, those bags starting to lift, then maybe he’ll go on a case, and maybe he doesn’t _need_ to jump out a window but he does, anyway. Maybe he doesn’t _need_ to hold that needle so close, or look at his colleagues with eyes so severe, so _unhinged_ , but he needs to prove it to them, doesn’t he?

He is not responsible, he is not able-minded, and so he should not be blamed for the desires that flood out of his pores and seep into his heartbeats and _persist,_ they persist through every nightmare and every case and every time he hears his parakeet chirp, every swallow of every pill, every clink of every cuff, every latch on every box, human-sized or not, because _everything_ reminds him, everything comes back to the man who has known him every second of his life, and more, _I knew you when you were but a twinkle in my eye,_ and he wants to be _known,_ and he wants to be cherished, and he wants to feel the weight of a man as a father, and he wants that father to want that, too.

 _Pity myself,_ he thinks, against those jail bars, on that cell floor, the requisite space between them as unbridgeable and gaping as an open mouth.

 _Pity myself,_ as he looks into eyes that are so like his own, _that I cannot cross that distance._

_Pity myself, until the day you do._

**Author's Note:**

> I''m going to pretend that this story exists solely as a distraction from the current state of affairs, and blame its existence entirely on the situation that necessitates such a distraction. 
> 
> Comments brighten my day!


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